Exhibition: J´ai perdu ma tête at Robert Morat Galerie Berlin

New Book: J´ai perdu ma tête published by Edition Taube

«There are words that sound too narrow and finite, underlying the real nature and complexity of their meaning, words that are nothing but codes, in an exercise of comfortable simplification. “Insanity” is one of them. Peter Granser opens countless windows on a world that is unknown – and consequently feared, set aside, intentionally or not but perhaps for the specific purpose that forgets its existence – and he does so by replacing words with photography. The first communication is what we put in place for ourselves when we try to interpret what is around us, even before we attempt any form of sharing, and words come later, to rethink what is the origin of our own experience, that is purely perceptual. It is when words fail, when they cannot be lined up and rearranged, that we feel inadequate when facing a world where we think we don’t belong, while it is our own world, though ruled by a logic that is much more simple and basic as to be disarming. It’s up to the viewer looking out of the windows that Peter Granser opened, it’s up to us to dig below the surface, and deprive us of the rules now settled in our communication, to catch the slightest gap between what exists and what we only choose to call real.»

Still available is the book Was einem Heimat war, published by Bücher&Hefte, 2012

«Photographs of war are much sought-after because they attract attention – drama, death and horror are reliable eye-catchers. A counter-strategy is pursued in the latest book by Peter Granser: “What We Once Called Home” (Verlag Bücher & Hefte, €28). It shows us a town that has been literally pulverized by armies, tanks, artillery and shells: Gruorn on the Swabian Alb. Its inhabitants were forced to abandon their homes when their village was incorporated into the Münsigen military training area in 1937–39.

What Peter Granser found here was therefore mostly a complete void. He makes what is absent into an important part of his visual language in photographs that bear a haunting resemblance to the earliest war photographs of all: Roger Fenton’s deserted landscapes captured during the Crimean War in 1855. Echoes of the American New Topographics movement in the 1960s are also apparent, when for example Granser composes black-and-white views of the barren hills of the Swabian Alb. He juxtaposes these images with sober studio shots of the ammunition used in Münsigen – a plethora of elegant-looking, deadly missiles before pristine white backgrounds. This chilling series is lent an emotional charge by the heart-rending, but futile, letter the Mayor of Gruorn wrote in 1937 lamenting the imminent extinction of his town. Peter Granser conjures from these elements a meditative study of transience and violence – a silent memorial in pictures.»